By Travis Bias, DO, MPH, DTM&H

In his commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, the late author David Foster Wallace told the story of two young fish swimming along. They pass an older fish swimming the other way who greets them: “Morning boys. How’s the water?” As they swim on, one of the younger fish responds to the other: “What the hell is water?”

Feeling and appreciating your body of water takes experience, maturity, and occasionally someone else making you aware of your daily surroundings. It was not until a few years into my career as a family medicine physician that I realized the furious pace at which American physicians learn to swim, insulated in a system that operates in stark contrast to that of other countries around the world.